- Mar 17, 2010
- 4,872
- 1,225
- 766
- MBTI
- ????
- Enneagram
- 9w1
Then don't let it bother you. Worrying never solves anything.
Doesn't mean it's right. You can always pick up advice from other types.
ever wonder whether you really exist?
- Thread starter TinyBubbles
- Start date
Then don't let it bother you. Worrying never solves anything.
Doesn't mean it's right. You can always pick up advice from other types.
easier said than done my friend, also i'm not particularly worried, just... really wanting to know :/
very true. right and wrong are kind of irrelevant here though, aren't they?
maybe it can be comprehended though, i think it's worth a try. and if this is pointless then why not everything, you know? discerning what is pointless and what isn't would itself require dismissing a whole bunch of things that COULD be useful
There exists an objective reality but we don't experience it directly. We take a tiny fraction of the information available and create our own realities from this. Nothing exists in the way you think it exists.
But Melkor made an excellent point earlier about who's to say which reality is real? all perceptions and points of view are as valid as each other.
If two people listen to a song and one of them loves it and one hates it. Who's right? they both are? love and hate are entirely creations of perception. They don't exist outside of our bodies. Whats really happening is the air is vibrating creating interference patterns which is translated into something ENTIRELY different to how it started by our brains. whether it's sounds good or not can never be said to be true or false.
Sound doesn't exist. colour doesn't exist. hot doesn't exist. cold doesn't exist. At least they don't outside of our perception. We are interference pattern detectors. nothing more. Every experience we have is an invention.
BUT. and this is a big fat BUT. how can we ever know that anything other than our perceptions exist? How do we know there exists an objective reality?
It may well be that we create our own realities. New developments and theories are beginning to suggest that there may not be an objective reality after all.
It's all rather confusing and to be honest, terrifying.
To sum up. we are real. But what you experience as reality isn't necessarily the final word. someone else may have a differnet view of reality which is just as valid
But Melkor made an excellent point earlier about who's to say which reality is real? all perceptions and points of view are as valid as each other.
If two people listen to a song and one of them loves it and one hates it. Who's right? they both are? love and hate are entirely creations of perception. They don't exist outside of our bodies. Whats really happening is the air is vibrating creating interference patterns which is translated into something ENTIRELY different to how it started by our brains. whether it's sounds good or not can never be said to be true or false.
Sound doesn't exist. colour doesn't exist. hot doesn't exist. cold doesn't exist. At least they don't outside of our perception. We are interference pattern detectors. nothing more. Every experience we have is an invention.
BUT. and this is a big fat BUT. how can we ever know that anything other than our perceptions exist? How do we know there exists an objective reality?
It may well be that we create our own realities. New developments and theories are beginning to suggest that there may not be an objective reality after all.
It's all rather confusing and to be honest, terrifying.
To sum up. we are real. But what you experience as reality isn't necessarily the final word. someone else may have a differnet view of reality which is just as valid
Yea, I sometimes ponder that I am just observing a 'replaying' of some event in time and none of these thoughts are actually mine. Sometimes I am curious whether this is just a simulation for something else. All of this is separate and does not correlate with the matrix, that is kinda cheesy.
I live my life with that considered as a probability. There are a lot of probabilities with me, very few absolutes.
I live my life with that considered as a probability. There are a lot of probabilities with me, very few absolutes.
Everything is real and nothing is real. Life is what it is, to us, but it's not really that way. We don't understand it. We can't comprehend it. What is real to us is not real. It is just perception. Beyond that, what we feel, feels real, but could be just a dream.
There exists an objective reality but we don't experience it directly. We take a tiny fraction of the information available and create our own realities from this. Nothing exists in the way you think it exists.
But Melkor made an excellent point earlier about who's to say which reality is real? all perceptions and points of view are as valid as each other.
If two people listen to a song and one of them loves it and one hates it. Who's right? they both are? love and hate are entirely creations of perception. They don't exist outside of our bodies. Whats really happening is the air is vibrating creating interference patterns which is translated into something ENTIRELY different to how it started by our brains. whether it's sounds good or not can never be said to be true or false.
Sound doesn't exist. colour doesn't exist. hot doesn't exist. cold doesn't exist. At least they don't outside of our perception. We are interference pattern detectors. nothing more. Every experience we have is an invention.
BUT. and this is a big fat BUT. how can we ever know that anything other than our perceptions exist? How do we know there exists an objective reality?
It may well be that we create our own realities. New developments and theories are beginning to suggest that there may not be an objective reality after all.
It's all rather confusing and to be honest, terrifying.
To sum up. we are real. But what you experience as reality isn't necessarily the final word. someone else may have a differnet view of reality which is just as valid
brilliantly stated, thankyou PJ.
This fly smells light. 
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...tically-engineered-bugs-can-smell-blue-light/
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...tically-engineered-bugs-can-smell-blue-light/
Absolutely not. I love this sort of thing. Philosophy is one of my favourite topics.
This fly smells light.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d...tically-engineered-bugs-can-smell-blue-light/
Thats nothing. Heard of synesthesia?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071226003600.htm
- Mar 17, 2010
- 4,872
- 1,225
- 766
- MBTI
- ????
- Enneagram
- 9w1
Oooooh Dove is synesthetic! She's actually been in the process of making a colour chart of all the different letters/number/words ect.
V.S. Ramachandran has some really interesting talks on synesthesia. I still think it is interesting that they are able to alter the fly's perception predictably rather than rely on a genetic mutation to repeat eventually in a person.
I've thought about this before, and the only conclusion I've been able to come up with is that I'll never know, at least not in the human condition I am currently in.
Someone posted Descartes previously in this thread, and it's in his statement that I try and take comfort in. We are something (well, I am, everyone else could be made up) We can question our own existence and in doing so, we prove that we exist to some extent. Sure, the actual reality might have us as nothing more than a dream of a god, but even in that we are still something. If we're just brains floating in a vat somewhere, we are something. The fact that we are aware of our existence means we exist as something somewhere. We are not nothing.
Our reality is shaped by our senses; they are how we interact with the world. I don't think we can ever know whether or not what we are seeing is "real." We are seeing it, we are experiencing it. Even if it is a dream world, we are in someway real, so the things around us are in some way real.
Beyond that, so what if we don't live in the actual reality? If you had the answer and found out we're something completely different, then what? Would you not then go and question the actuality of that reality? It is a never ending cycle. No matter how many new realities you discover, each one will be questioned. In the end, you have to ask how much time you are willing to devote to a question that will never be satisfied, but will continue to cycle on with each discovery. The fact that we can ask these questions means we are something, and our experiences are something as well. To me, that's all I'll ever know, and it is good enough for me.
Someone posted Descartes previously in this thread, and it's in his statement that I try and take comfort in. We are something (well, I am, everyone else could be made up) We can question our own existence and in doing so, we prove that we exist to some extent. Sure, the actual reality might have us as nothing more than a dream of a god, but even in that we are still something. If we're just brains floating in a vat somewhere, we are something. The fact that we are aware of our existence means we exist as something somewhere. We are not nothing.
Our reality is shaped by our senses; they are how we interact with the world. I don't think we can ever know whether or not what we are seeing is "real." We are seeing it, we are experiencing it. Even if it is a dream world, we are in someway real, so the things around us are in some way real.
Beyond that, so what if we don't live in the actual reality? If you had the answer and found out we're something completely different, then what? Would you not then go and question the actuality of that reality? It is a never ending cycle. No matter how many new realities you discover, each one will be questioned. In the end, you have to ask how much time you are willing to devote to a question that will never be satisfied, but will continue to cycle on with each discovery. The fact that we can ask these questions means we are something, and our experiences are something as well. To me, that's all I'll ever know, and it is good enough for me.